An SEO audit is a review of a website that finds what stops it from ranking and what to fix first. For a Middle East website, the audit has to check the Arabic and the English versions separately. Many problems hide in the Arabic pages: missing hreflang tags, translated keywords, broken right-to-left layouts, or Arabic pages that Google never indexed. This guide explains what a Middle East SEO audit covers, what you should receive at the end, and how to turn the findings into a plan.
When Your Website Needs an SEO Audit
- Before you launch an Arabic version of your website.
- When your English pages rank in the region but your Arabic pages do not.
- After a drop in organic traffic from one or more Middle East countries.
- After a redesign, a new platform or a change of domain.
- Before you start working with a new SEO team or agency.
- Once a year, as a regular health check.
What a Middle East SEO Audit Covers
| Area | What is checked | Common problems |
|---|---|---|
| Indexing and crawling | Search Console page indexing, sitemaps, robots rules and canonical tags | Arabic pages not indexed, or canonicalised to the English page |
| International setup | URLs, hreflang, lang and dir attributes, language switcher | Missing return links, invalid codes such as ar-KSA, automatic redirects |
| Speed and mobile | Core Web Vitals, mobile layout and font loading | Slow pages, heavy Arabic font files, broken right-to-left layouts on phones |
| Keywords and rankings | Current rankings in Arabic and English by country, and keyword gaps | Pages that target translated terms nobody searches for |
| On-page SEO | Title tags, meta descriptions, headings, alt text and internal links | English or missing titles on Arabic pages, duplicate titles |
| Content quality | Native writing, search intent, local details and thin pages | Machine-translated text, Arabic pages with far less content than the English ones |
| Structured data | Schema types and errors | Schema only on English pages, or schema that does not match the page |
| Backlinks | Referring domains, their relevance and their language | Few Arabic backlinks, or links from low-quality link packages |
| Local SEO | Google Business Profile and business details | No Arabic business name, different addresses on different sites |
| AI search | Snippet eligibility and how clearly pages answer questions | Snippet blocks, pages with no clear answers |
Our guides to bilingual SEO, Arabic keyword research, Arabic link building and AI Overviews in Arabic explain how to fix each type of problem.
Checks Specific to Arabic Websites
- Every Arabic page has its own URL and appears in the XML sitemap.
- Every template works right to left, including menus, forms, carts and checkout, as our guide to Arabic UX and RTL web design explains.
- Arabic keywords include spelling variants and the dialect words of each target country.
- Arabic title tags are fully in Arabic and not cut off in search results.
- Prices, currencies, dates and phone numbers are local to each market.
- The brand name is written the same way in Arabic on every page, as our guide on how to translate a brand name into Arabic explains.
- A native speaker has reviewed the Arabic content for tone and quality as well as meaning.
Tools Used in an SEO Audit
- Google Search Console, for indexing, performance by country and Core Web Vitals.
- Bing Webmaster Tools, for the second search engine in the region.
- A site crawler such as Screaming Frog, for hreflang, canonical tags, titles and broken links.
- PageSpeed Insights, for mobile speed.
- Ahrefs or Semrush, for rankings, keyword gaps and backlinks.
- Google's Rich Results Test, for structured data.
- A manual review by a native Arabic SEO specialist, because tools cannot judge Arabic quality or dialect.
Google's guide to hiring an SEO advises giving an SEO only read access to Search Console at the audit stage, without write access.
What You Should Receive From an SEO Audit
Google's guide to hiring an SEO says an audit should give realistic estimates of improvement and of the work involved. A useful Middle East SEO audit includes:
- A list of issues, grouped by severity and by language version.
- A prioritised plan of quick wins, technical fixes, content work and link building.
- The owner of each fix: developer, writer or SEO specialist.
- An estimate of the effort each fix needs.
- Baseline metrics by country and language, so you can measure progress later.
- Keyword opportunities in Arabic and English for each target market.
How to Prioritise the Audit Results
| Priority | Examples | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Critical | Arabic pages not indexed, canonical tags pointing to English, pages blocked by robots rules | The pages cannot rank at all |
| High | hreflang errors, slow mobile pages, missing Arabic title tags | They limit rankings across many pages |
| Medium | Thin content, missing internal links, schema errors | They affect individual pages |
| Ongoing | Content gaps, backlinks, local SEO | They build rankings over months |
Fix the critical issues first. After a fix, Google has to crawl the pages again, and Google says this can take from a few days to a few weeks. Our guide on how long SEO takes in the Middle East explains what to expect after that.
After the Audit
Turn the findings into a roadmap with dates and owners, and track progress every month. Run a full audit again every 6 to 12 months, and after any redesign or platform change. Between audits, our Arabic SEO checklist lets your team check the main points themselves.
Conclusion
A Middle East SEO audit checks the Arabic and English versions of your website separately, and ends with a clear list of fixes in order of priority. GOTOMENA audits Arabic and English websites for global brands through our Arabic SEO services. To audit your website, contact our team.